


Homecoming

by theroguesgambit



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Derek Leaves Beacon Hills, FIx It, Hale Pack, M/M, because i think we all need that right now, but everything's good and nothing hurts, emissary stiles, jackson hale, shameless fluffiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2018-03-17 15:59:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3535433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theroguesgambit/pseuds/theroguesgambit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are <em>things</em> in there, and his body thrills with the promise of them. Things older than human memory, waiting to be discovered and protected and guarded against. It feels right being here, so far away and distant from everything he’s ever known.</p><p>It feels like home.<br/>--<br/>Derek leaves Beacon Hills, reforms his pack, and finally finds some peace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homecoming

**Author's Note:**

> Written right after I heard the news about Hoechlin stepping down from series regular status in season five. This is how I made it ok for myself.

Derek drops the last box to the smooth oak table and gives himself a moment to take in the space. _Really_ take it in.

It isn’t as though he hasn’t seen it before: months ago, in pictures, when he first started looking for places to move, and then again a few days ago on that last walkthrough before he’d signed the papers, to make sure it was really solid and defensible, that it could really feel like _home_.

It’s old in the way you couldn’t really find back in California, in the way that modern conveniences had clearly been added in well after the fact. Crumbling, ivy-covered stonework on the house and the winding, waist-height wall surrounding the property juxtaposed itself with the four car garage and the solar panels on the south side of the roof. There were quaint fireplaces in each of the seven bedrooms, and four bathrooms that had been remodeled so recently Derek could still smell the fresh grout. The rooms had been similarly furnished over the past few days - by hands more adept than he’d ever concerned himself with being - with a suiting mixture of classic designs and sleek modern touches.

And then there was the land.

His eyes drift from the walls – the row of bookshelves ready to be lined with his family’s surviving tomes and relics, salvaged from the Hale house and the now-empty ancestral vault – to the narrow line of windows and the stretch of trees out beyond the stone wall. There are _things_ in there, and his body thrills with the promise of them. Things older than human memory, waiting to be discovered and protected and guarded against. It feels _right_ being here, so far away and distant from everything he’s ever known.

It feels like home.

“Strange, isn’t it?” Her voice is sudden and startling in the silence of the house. He glances to the doorway and finds a slight figure hovering there, a small silhouette with crossed arms, head tilted thoughtfully. “Even the air feels different here. Back when I was in Beacon Hills it was always so… heavy.”

Derek shrugs, shifting his gaze back to the window.

There’s a part of him that still feels guilty about leaving, about abandoning his family’s home, even to the hands of someone as capable as Scott McCall. There will probably always be a pull in his heart trying to tug him back there, back to the land and the mission and the people he left behind.

Cora doesn’t feel it the way he does, was too young when the fire happened, spent her teen years forming an identity elsewhere while Derek, for all his years traveling the country with Laura, never _really_ left. But she does seem to sense the same peace he does from this place, the same sense of welcoming back old friends. He probably wouldn’t have been able to bring himself to leave Beacon Hills for anything less than this.

She takes his silence in stride in a way she probably wouldn’t have a year ago, crossing the room, resting her head against his shoulder and taking in the long stretch of forest along with him.

A box hits the floor just inside the doorway.

“Are you absolutely sure about this, Derek? ‘Cause we can still just turn around and start driving, but once we unpack the truck we’re pretty much stuck here.”

Cora snorts, rolling her head to frown at the new arrival.

“Are you seriously trying to talk us out of the place _you_ scouted for us, Lahey?”

Isaac steps into the room, hands in his pockets, gazing around the living room skeptically.

“Hey, it’s a quality place. I’m just not sure I’m feeling the whole American Werewolf in London cliché.”

“American werewolf _outside_ London,” Derek corrects idly, and Isaac shoots him a faint, tentative grin.

They’ve been in touch for months now, are finding their way slowly past the shaky ground they’d been on since before Isaac left. Since before _Derek_ left with Cora that first time, honestly. Since Derek had pushed him away for his own good.

Him agreeing to scout houses here in England for them had been a huge step. Him agreeing, once Derek had worked up the courage to ask, to stay with them, at least temporarily, had been more than he could have hoped for. His first beta, back at his side.

…Well, almost.

“Anyway, don’t let Jackson hear you say that,” he adds, and feels Cora laugh against him. “He said the next person he hears making a joke about that…”

He trails off as the man in question stalks in from the main hall, bumping past Isaac and dropping his own armload of boxes at Derek’s feet before pointing back to the doorway, scowling.

“Does he _really_ have to be here?”

Isaac has half a second to look affronted before Peter sweeps in, hand pressed to his chest.

“I’m wounded. Don’t tell me you don’t want to spend time with your dear father.”

“You’re _not_ my dad,” Jackson grits, before leaning in close to Derek, hissing “We killed him once already. You losers couldn’t deal with it again after I left town?”

Peter, meanwhile, has taken to examining his nails with a mock-critical eye. (He, Derek notes, hadn’t bothered to bring any boxes inside with him.)

“When I tracked down the Desert Wolf, she told me quite clearly you were my—”

“I won’t live here,” Jackson says loudly, drowning out his next words. “I will _not ever_ be living here as long as he is.”

Cora straightens, hands falling to her hips. She’d never met Jackson before they’d flown in last week, but she’d been quick to adopt a no nonsense attitude that gets him backing down faster than he _ever_ has with Derek.

Derek suspects it’s because of her similarities to Lydia Martin… a comparison that’s frankly uncomfortable to dwell on considering recent bloodline revelations.

“No one’s _asking_ you to stay here, Whittemore. You don’t want to be here, just stay with your parents in your fancy London penthouse.”

Jackson huffs, shoulders bowing. For all his posturing, Derek knows he hadn’t enjoyed being an omega here in Europe.

…No one _enjoys_ being the only one of their kind, alone.

“I could,” he mutters, stubbornly, while Peter sing-songs “they’re not his parents” cruelly in the background. Derek flashes his eyes blue and Peter smirks. But there’s a touch of fondness in his eyes as they fall back on Jackson, and Derek remembers how, even long ago, before Peter had known anything, he’d been the one to oppose killing the kanima, to preach love as a way to save Jackson’s life. There’s hope there, Derek thinks, in its own twisted, blackened and half-burnt out form.

But this is a place for fresh starts.

He claps Isaac’s shoulder as he crosses the room, heading back to the truck for a second armful of boxes.

“We’re staying,” he says, and the eyeroll his beta – _his beta_ , even if Derek isn’t an Alpha anymore, not really – aims his way is comfortable and easy. There’s a smile in it, and he offers a sloppy, mock salute before crossing the room to stand beside Cora, facing Jackson.

Derek hears something about how a stereotype of a werewolf like Jackson would probably prefer living in the city proper before Jackson snarls and dives forward. Cora’s laughter follows Derek out into the yard.

He pauses on his way to the truck, gets distracted by the sweetness of early summer in the air, the sound of his pack _– his pack_ – bickering and teasing inside the house. And the thrum of magic in the land, old and unfamiliar and still somehow _his._

He’s at the edge of the property, eyes closed and soaking in the welcome of the earth, when a hand touches his hip.

“Hey, the super-powered people are supposed to be handling the heavy lifting.”

Derek hums, smiling softly when a lithe body moves in to press against his back, chin hooking over his shoulder.

“Off communing with nature, big guy?”

He sighs, leaning back into the contact. The hand at his hip slides to wrap around his waist. The other one shifts, brushing along Derek’s until he twists his wrist, threads their fingers together.

“I didn’t expect it to feel like this. I mean, it’s Hale land, but so was Beacon Hills.”

Stiles laughs, his chest vibrating against Derek’s back.

“Yeah, I mean, it’s not like any Hale has marked the trees out here for at least a couple centuries, right?”

Derek turns to shoot him a scowl, and Stiles takes the opportunity to capture his lips in a soft, grinning kiss. Derek breaks away a few seconds too late with a pointed huff.

“It’s my ancestral home, Stiles. We’re connected by magic and history in the land, not _scent marking._ ”

Stiles hums, shifting around in sliding steps until he’s in front of Derek, arms looped around his neck.

“Good to know you’re still a sourwolf, even now that you’re all fancy and European.”

“Don’t call me sourwolf,” Derek replies, and hides his smile with another kiss… which, granted, probably won’t do much to dissuade him either.

Still though, _kissing_. It’s still a new enough thing for them to be worth losing ground in an argument over.

Stiles whines softly when he tries to break away, cupping his nape in both hands and chasing him forward. Derek lets himself be caught, lets Stiles stumble a step closer to him before twisting them, pressing Stiles back against the low wall and crowding in against him. His body’s thrumming with the thrill of the contact, of being in this new and old home so rich with ancient magic, of having a pack again, a _family_ of blood and bite and choice.

And of _Stiles_. After too many months dancing around each other, of wanting without really realizing it, without _letting_ themselves realize it, they finally discovered each other at the last possible moment… except…

Stiles is the one to break away this time, breathing too hard and a little shaky, pressing close, burying his face in Derek’s neck.

“ _Fuck,_ ” he breathes and then, a few seconds later, “I wish I was staying here with you.”

Derek sighs, presses his lips soft to Stiles’ temple.

“You are.”

Stiles pulls back, scowling. Lifts a hand to bat against Derek’s shoulder.

“Yeah, for the _summer_.”

“Summer’s a long time.”

“Yeah,” Stiles snaps back, “And the school year’s even longer.”

Stiles’ senior year. From a distance it looks like an endless stretch, and Derek half wishes he could have stuck it out in Beacon Hills just that one more year, been by his side until he graduated.

But there was too much pain for him in that place. Too many losses, echoes of betrayal and his own self-loathing. Cora wouldn’t come near the place, and neither would Isaac, and the darkness in their pasts was constantly twisting at Peter’s soul. As much as Beacon Hills was home, it was too tainted for the Hale pack, and trying to stay there, even for Stiles, would just make things worse in the long run.

Derek needs to be away, to heal. Stiles, beneath all his frustration, knows that.

“It’s not that long,” he says, and Stiles huffs incredulously. “Just a few seasons. And it’s not like I won’t be around at all. I’ll be in and out, checking on things, stopping you from getting killed when you need it.”

Stiles sits back against the stone wall, parting his legs and pulling Derek close between them.

“The amount of times killer things attack in Beacon Hills, you might as well just not leave then.”

Derek smirks down at him.

“You won’t even have time to miss me.”

Stiles snorts, fisting into his shirt and tugging him close.

“Oh look, now he’s an optimist.”

“Just a realist,” Derek murmurs, smiling at the sensation of Stiles’ warm breath against his mouth. “We’ve waited for this a long time. Do you really think a few months apart will be able to ruin us?”

“God, now he’s a romantic. What the hell is this English air doing to you?”

But Stiles is grinning, a little shyly, a _lot_ smugly, and when their lips meet again they don’t come up for air for a long time.

“We’ll be ok,” Derek says when they draw apart. Stiles rolls his eyes and bites his lip, but he can’t seem to swallow his smile.

“Nah, man. We’ll be _amazing_.”

There’s a gagging sound from the driveway, before Cora’s voice rings out:

“Oh my god, you two are _terrible_. Are you gonna be like that all summer?”

“They can be like that all they want,” Peter cuts in with a leer, “ _after_ they finish unloading the truck.”

Jackson, already with an armful of boxes, is muttering: “Since when did Stilinski and Hale even _like_ each other anyway?”

At which Isaac nearly drops his own box, laughing.

“Are you kidding? When _weren’t_ they making eyes at each other?”

Stiles groans, dropping his head down against Derek’s shoulder.

“That’s it. You’re all excommunicated from the pack.” And then, more softly: “That’s totally a future emissary’s prerogative, right? Veto rights on pack members?”

Derek huffs, hiding his grin.

“No excommunicating on move in day.”

“Ooh, smart. Get them to do the heavy lifting, then dump them.”

“What do you think I brought you along for?”

Stiles gets his earlobe between his teeth and tugs.

“That’s it, Hale. I’m vetoing you first.”

“Cute.”

“I like to think so.” Then he pulls back, lacing their fingers carefully together, staring down at them for a long moment before tugging.

“Come on then, big bad. Let’s help your pack get your house set up pretty.”

Derek squeezes their fingers together once, making Stiles stall and quirk a curious brow.

“ _Ours_ ,” Derek corrects pointedly.

Their home, their pack. Their fresh start.

Stiles grins back at him.

“Ours.”

**Author's Note:**

> My ideal Hale pack (well, in my ideal Hale pack, they would figure out how to resurrect Boyd and Erica somewhere along the way. Maybe that's a sequel for another day). I just needed some happy Derek and Hale pack and Sterek right now. And I had to stick Jackson Hale in there too because… reasons.
> 
> [Come find me on Tumblr](http://halekingsourwolf.tumblr.com)


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